


love, from seed to seed, from planet to planet

by radioactivesaltghoul



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Flowers, Force Dyad (Star Wars), Hopeful Ending, No Pregnancy, Planet Ahch-To (Star Wars), Planet Crait (Star Wars), Planet Pasaana (Star Wars), Safe to Read if You're Triggered by Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:28:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: “They’re beautiful,” she says. “Whenever I see you, I also see flowers.”“Likewise.”“I should hate you,” she murmurs. It’s not news to him, but the words still sting. “But I don’t. How can I, if flowers bloom like this when we’re together?”
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 18
Kudos: 52
Collections: To Rapture the Earth and the Seas: the 2020 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology





	love, from seed to seed, from planet to planet

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thrilled that I was able to participate in the 2020 RFFA and had so much fun writing this fic! Huge thanks to MsCoppelia for betaing and another huge thanks to the RFFA mods (Aionimica and PoliticalMamaduck in particular for all of the great feedback). This fic is so much stronger thanks to their help.

He’s never seen anything like her: powerful, feral, and more than capable of holding her own in a fight. It’s still humiliating that she managed to overpower him in the interrogation room, but the mortification is now mixed with exhilaration, the likes of which he hasn’t felt in years. She’s powerful and she’s untrained, and he’s going to make her his apprentice.

But then she turns him down, having already made up her mind about him.

 _Monster,_ she’s thinking.

She’s right, but that doesn’t make him want her any less.

It’s a close fight, and when she strikes him down and slashes his face open with his grandfather’s lightsaber, the shame and near-adoration are on the brink of blinding him. The last thing he sees before the planet splits apart, pulling them to different sides of a chasm, is her running through the forest.

Smart idea. The planet is falling apart, after all, no thanks to that band of murders, traitors, and thieves she calls friends.

He’s so distracted by all of the thoughts and feelings he’s struggling to push away that he doesn’t even notice the bushes with little purple buds popping up through the snow. They cling to his clothing, clawing at him, one more obstacle on top of everything else that has happened over the last few hours.

By the time he’s managed to get himself onto a rescue ship, it’s too dark to see the tiny lilac flowers that have started to bloom all around the clearing where they dueled. Not long after, they’re consumed by the force of an entire planet exploding, leaving behind any trace of the fight that has just occurred.

If only, Kylo will reflect later, he could do the same with his traitorous thoughts about the girl.

* * *

Ahch-To is nothing like Rey imagined when she’d set out. Luke doesn’t want anything to do with her or the Resistance, and she sees Kylo Ren pop in and out of existence on a regular basis.

“Can you see my surroundings?” he asks the first time it happens, sounding more fascinated than anything.

Rey isn’t in any mood to discuss whatever connection they’d created on Starkiller Base. If Luke won’t teach her about the Force, she’s not going to go to Kylo for answers. “You’re going to pay for what you did,” she growls.

He continues as if she hasn’t said anything. “I can’t see yours. Just you.”

The conversation ends, leaving Rey more angry and confused than before.

She thinks it’s a fluke until she sees him again later. “Why is the Force connecting us? You and I,” he adds, as if there could be any confusion as to whom he’s referring. She may not like it, but she can’t deny that she feels a pull to him that she’s never felt from anyone else.

Rey is still too angry to want to listen to him, but when the connection breaks, she’s left more confused than before. She glances down at the ground, trying to make sense of why Kylo thinks he’s a monster. There’s something on the ground that wasn’t there previously.

She frowns, then crouches down to take a closer look at the round, green things that have suddenly appeared. They’re plants, but she hasn’t seen this kind yet on Ahch-To. She watches, fascinated, as they grow, uncurling as they rise from the ground. By the time they stop a minute later, they’re tall enough to tickle the exposed skin above her boot cuffs. The way they’re fringed looks funny, but the green is a bright color that reminds her of Takodana.

This planet is a Force nexus, she knows. Perhaps it felt awakened by her using the Force, however unintentional. When she asks Luke about it later, he stares blankly at her and tells her she must be mistaken. “That’s not how the Force works,” he says gruffly.

That line is starting to grow old.

The third time Kylo appears before her, his words cut right through the bone. She doesn’t want to believe his version of the events the night he left—fled—Luke’s temple, but deep in her bones she knows he’s telling the truth. She spies more of the fringey green plants growing as she storms away, leaving a trail of new growth as she makes her way to the cave Luke told her to avoid.

He lied to her about Kylo. About Ben. Maybe he’s lying to her about this, too.

When Rey all but crawls back to her hut later, her mind is buzzing with even more questions than it had prior to entering the hole. As soon as she reaches out to the one person who has been honest with her from the start, the words spill out as she explains her experience in the cave.

Ben listens in silence, but she can feel how focused he is on her. The hut’s only light comes from the fire warming her clothes, still damp from the water, so she thinks it’s a trick of the light when she sees tiny, fluffy white flowers blooming around the benches on which she and Ben are perched.

“I thought I’d find answers here,” she confesses. “I was wrong. I’ve never felt so alone.” The words are dangerous, but it’s freeing that she can finally be honest with someone.

“You’re not alone,” he tells her, and she believes it. A part of her hates it, hates that the only person in the galaxy to whom she’s ever felt this kind of connection is the enemy, but she can’t deny that she also craves it.

The words spill out of her before she realizes what she’s saying. “Neither are you,” she breathes.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the little white flowers clearly enough that she knows it’s not her imagination. They’re small, but they’re growing so fast that they’re already carpeting the hut floor with blossoms that look fuzzy to the touch. There are yellow ones now as well, bigger and more vibrant than the white ones, but she’s too focused on Ben to pay them much attention.

“It isn’t too late,” she adds, holding out her hand as the plants practically flood the hut, covering their feet in dabs of white and yellow. It’s meant to be more of a symbolic gesture, so it sends a shock straight through her system when their fingers touch, the blossoms swelling into vines that tie their hands together, powdering them in tiny petals.

Rey inhales sharply, but before she can experiment with this newfound ability, Luke comes crashing into the hut, stomping the flowers that are now covering the floor as he tears the structure down with the Force. Ben vanishes a second later, but the flowers remain, even though they’ve been reduced to piles of broken stems and drowned petals in the rain. Rey is no Jedi master—she still barely understands what any of it means—but the message is clear:

_Go to him. Ben Solo will turn._

* * *

This should be a triumphant moment for Kylo.

Snoke is dead. He’s now the Supreme Leader of the First Order. The most powerful being in the galaxy. He has all the might of the First Order’s armies behind him, and the Resistance is all but decimated. And yet the sight of the golden dice laying on the ground is nearly enough to undo him. The flowers starting to poke out of the ground only add to the hurt, reminding him of what he felt when he and Rey touched hands from across the galaxy. He reaches out to slam the door shut behind him with the Force before tilting his head up to see her standing above him.

As before, he can’t see her surroundings, but he can see the flowers springing to life at her feet and he knows without looking that the ground around him is in a similar state. She’s too far away to see details, but the floppy petals’ bright pink and red colors are visible from where he kneels, growing so quickly that they soon shield her boots from view. There are yellow ones, too, with petals pointed straight up at the sky, brushing up against her knees as if they’re reaching for her to keep her rooted to the ground, a moment trapped in time.

He’s surrounded by the yellow flowers as well, but instead of the droopy pink and red ones, he’s engulfed by intricately petaled flowers that are violent orange and deep red in color. These ones look as angry as Kylo feels, burning with a rage that he doesn’t fully understand as he stares up at Rey, a million questions on this tongue. _Why did you leave? What does the Resistance have for you that I don’t? How can you turn your back on the way we fight together, as if we’re one being?_

The last few days have been such a whirlwind that he hadn’t had a chance to research this floral phenomenon’s meaning, and even if he had, there would have been no good way of explaining it to Snoke. Nothing Kylo has ever encountered in his lifelong study of the Force has made mention of flowers springing to life when two Force-sensitives come into contact. But then again, he’s never encountered anything like his soul-deep bond with Rey.

The fact that they remain connected despite Snoke’s claims that he engineered it thrills and repulses Kylo in equal measure. He hates her for rejecting him yet again, he hates her for abandoning him, and he hates her for her misguided belief that Ben Solo is still alive.

And yet.

There is no denying the growth, the blooms sprouting out of an impossible surface. Whether Rey wants to acknowledge it or not—and the answer is not, judging from her expression—the link between them remains. There’s a brief moment where he thinks she’s going to change her mind, but it’s shattered in a gesture that is unmistakably a door being slammed in his face.

It’s too much—Snoke, Rey, Hux, and these kriffing flowers that follow him and Rey around the galaxy. Kylo slams a fist on the ground, crushing orange and yellow blossoms in the process. They’re delicate things, but the color is so vivid against the black of his gloves and the white of the floor that it’s suddenly too much.

Without regard for how excessive it is, he jumps to his feet, taking his lightsaber to the growth that has sprung up in a circle around him. The First Order will be awaiting his command now that the Resistance has escaped, but Kylo is too full of rage and pain to take notice of anything else right now.

It’s only when the last petal turns to ash that he realizes he’s suddenly, utterly, absolutely exhausted.

* * *

When she and Kylo cross paths again, it’s on Pasaana. In retrospect, she supposes she shouldn’t be so surprised that he was able to nail down her location with a stolen necklace, given how much technology the First Order possesses.

Finn, Poe, and Chewie are already on the ship, ready to head off on the next step in their unnecessarily long quest to figure out where the Final Order is hiding. Finn shouts her name, telling her to get on the ship before the First Order catches up to them, but Rey’s barely paying attention as she scans the horizon.

 _He’s coming,_ the Force tells her, a hint of green now peeking up through the sand. _Wait and see._

“You have to go,” she shouts without turning back to look at her friends. “You’ve got the dagger. You know where to go next. I’ll figure out my own way off this planet.”

“Rey—” Finn begins, but she cuts him off again.

“This is what the Force is telling me to do,” she says, turning to face him. She almost feels guilty about it; no one except Leia will question the logic of “the Force made me do it,” and something tells Rey that the General would be in favor of this move.

There’s no time for guilt now, however. She can see the sand kicking up on the horizon now as Kylo’s TIE Silencer crosses the desert, speeding towards her. “I’ll be fine,” she says to her friends. “I know what I’m doing. You need to leave, now.”

Chewie rumbles out a protest in Shyriiwook, and Poe asks, “You know who’s after us, right?” in a tone that makes it clear he can’t believe he actually has to confirm this. As if Rey needs reminding who, exactly, is in that particular TIE Silencer.

“You need to trust me,” she replies. “And you need to trust the Force, whether you’re sensitive to it or not.” Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Finn mutter something to Poe. Whatever he says must convince Poe, because he gives Rey one last apprehensive look before turning to pull the others onto the stolen ship. They don’t argue again before their stolen ship takes off from the planet’s surface, kicking up more dust as it does. Rey coughs, wishing she could use the Force to clear the sand from her lungs. Now _that_ would have come in handy during her days on Jakku.

He’s almost here. This move is risky and no doubt a terrible idea, but since when has she exercised good judgement when it comes to the man speeding towards her? He’s been on her tail from the start, having gone so far as to track her down to this desert world not unlike her home planet, and there’s a thrill she gets at the idea of doing something so showy, so risky, that it knocks him off-kilter before he can even exit the ship. She pauses as if she’s expecting to stand right in his way, then she ignites her lightsaber. Inhaling deeply, she takes off in a run directly into the ship’s path.

Oh, this is going to be fun _._

They’ve spent the last eight months trying to ignore the way they’re bound in the Force. Rey hates their connection almost as much as she craves it. No matter how hard she works to wrap herself in her Jedi training, in her role in the Resistance, in the friendships she’s built in the months since leaving Jakku, there’s never been anyone whose words can strike her heart quite like his can. She’s tried to look for it in everyone else, because what kind of person feels this way about their sworn enemy? And yet she can’t resist the longing for the person who once promised her she wasn’t alone when it felt like the entire galaxy was against her. But she’s an expert in denial, and she’s had no problem denying the pull she feels towards Kylo Ren.

( _Ben Solo,_ her mind whispers. But no, he chose to be Kylo that day on the _Supremacy._ )

The timing has to be just right for what she’s planning. Rey counts her steps down: _three, two, one_. Then she leaps, saber out, flipping over his TIE Silencer in a perfectly timed move to slice one of the wings clean off. It’s a vicious feeling she has when the ship falls apart, skidding across the sand.

And they’re just getting started.

She advances, feeling unconcerned with whether he made it out of the crash or not. He’s fine. Enraged, but fine.

When they finally do meet, it’s a no-holds-barred fight. Rey’s rather unconventional Jedi training hasn’t involved much lightsaber dueling practice, but she and Kylo fight as if they were made for it. It’s practically a dance, the way their sabers clash as they circle each other.

The landscape is changing, too. New growth sprouts up in the desert around their feet as they chase each other around. The four-petaled flowers are as red as Kylo’s lightsaber with yellow centers, interspersed with fringey green plants not unlike the ones Rey saw on Ahch-To. The similarity of these ones would probably bring her to tears if she wasn’t so consumed with the duel.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Kylo says, blocking her swipe as if she’s merely an annoyance. “We could—”

“No,” Rey hisses, spinning around to take a swipe at his side, which is undefended.

He blocks it just as easily, then lunges for her. “I thought you were supposed to be a Jedi,” he sneers.

“Your point?” she retorts, stomping all over the flowers. There are more of them now, little violet-blue flowers interspersed with the leafy green plants and the red ones. It’s almost as if they’re in competition with each other, each plant seeing who can propagate the fastest in a near-mockery of their lightsaber colors.

Stars, she’s angry. She knew it was going to hurt when they finally crossed paths in person again, but she never imagined it would be like this. It’s so much more difficult to pretend she doesn’t feel anything for him when they’re on opposite sides of the galaxy. But here, among the flowers, it’s impossible to hide her feelings from herself. The passion, the affection, the fervor she has to feel his touch again like that night on Ahch-To when she started to see him as something other than the one-dimensional villain she’d wanted to paint him as. The depth of the emotion is overwhelming, and she relishes the way it’s manifesting as anger. It’s easier to feel rage than it is to feel the vulnerability he’s managed to coax out of her before.

“A little angry for a Jedi, don’t you think?” he quips. How this man has managed to quip in the middle of a duel, she’ll never figure out. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he sounds fond of her right now.

Except that she does know better. “Kriff off, Kylo.” It’s not exactly her most witty retort, but she’s having a hard time focusing on words right now.

The flowers are growing bigger and wilder now, and there are new ones appearing. White ones with thickly layered petals, in addition to the ruby and sapphire blossoms that are now covering the desert floor. They take no regard for the way they’re getting crushed by Rey’s and Kylo’s feet as they make their way across the desert floor, each trampled flower being replaced by three new ones as if they have a message for the two Force-sensitives: _You’ll never escape us. Listen to our message. You’re bound together whether you like it or not._

The thing is, it’s difficult to hold on to her anger when she can sense Kylo’s emotions, too. There’s rage, of course, but there’s also longing. And, strangely, relief that she’s here, running at him with a lightsaber.

It’s the relief that causes Rey to falter. It’s a tender emotion that she’s not expecting from the man who she turned down nearly a year ago. If she’s being honest with herself—and she rarely is, when it comes to him—she’s experiencing the same thing, too.

She stumbles, feet tangling in the plants as they start to claw their way up Rey’s and Kylo’s legs. She barely recovers in time to avoid Kylo’s next strike as he swipes at her, ducking under his arm and using her shoulder to slam into a tender spot on his ribcage. With the way the flowers are twisting up their bodies, Rey’s hit is hard enough to knock him off balance, and she tumbles down with him.

* * *

It’s instinct to wrap his arm around Rey, pinning her against his side as he flounders, tripping over the new growth sprouting all over the desert floor. Puffs of pollen fly into the air as their bodies crush flowers when they land.

Embarrassingly, it causes him to sneeze.

Rey laughs. It doesn’t sound amused so much as hysterical. He can relate. Naming emotions has never been his strong suit; he prefers to wrap himself in his devotion to the dark side of the Force. But this woman has managed to challenge him at every turn since the day they met, and he can’t deny how satisfied he is that he managed to catch her before she can run back to whatever backwater planet the Resistance is hiding out on these days. He still hasn’t let her go, and she’s not trying to wriggle out of his grasp.

For what reason, he doesn’t dare hope.

Eventually, her giggles abate enough for words. “I’m still angry with you,” she says, refusing to turn to face him.

“I know.”

“And you’re still angry with me, too.”

There’s no point in denying it. There’s no point in denying anything when it comes to her. Not anymore. “Yes.”

They’re both silent, watching as pollen and a rainbow of petals fly up in the desert wind. “Where did the flowers come from?” Rey asks eventually.

“From us, I believe. From the Force.” There’s no other reasonable explanation for why they’re in a vibrant garden in the middle of a desert planet. This explanation isn’t the pinnacle of rationality, but something about Rey consistently stretches his beliefs about the Force, about life, about everything. It stands to reason the flowers should, too.

Another silence passes as they process this. “So what does that mean?” Rey asks. The catch in her voice is subtle, but it doesn’t escape his notice. Neither of them has made any move to untangle themselves, nor have they made any move to grow closer. He can feel how fast her heart is beating; he suspects his is racing just as hard.

He doesn’t answer. Not immediately. He’s considering his words—a first, where Rey is concerned. The bond they share thanks to the Force whispers to him, telling him she knows the answer. She’s just afraid to be the first one to voice it. She’s in denial, just like she was about her parents. “You know what it means,” he eventually replies.

She doesn’t respond to that. She knows he’s right. “They’re beautiful,” she says instead. “Whenever I see you, I also see flowers.”

“Likewise.”

She shifts, rolling over so that they’re face-to-face. He hasn’t been this close to another being in years, outside of a fight. He feels his breath catch in his throat as her eyes roam his face, scanning for a reaction. His gut instinct, honed from years of manipulation and abuse, is to shield his thoughts. But the way she reaches out with the Force as they gaze at each other makes him pause; he doesn’t shy away.

He’s not sure there’s a point in trying to hide from her now, anyway.

“I should hate you,” she murmurs. It’s not news to him, but the words still sting. “But I don’t. How can I, if flowers bloom like this when we’re together?”

He’s not sure she wants to hear this, but she needs to know it anyway. “We’re a dyad in the Force,” he explains, daring to reach out and brush a red petal off her shoulder. “Two halves of the same. We were always meant to find each other.” His hand lingers on her arm, the exposed skin between her arm wraps and shirt hot from the energy of their battle-driven exertion. The flowers are still growing, a riot of color covering their bodies, a physical manifestation of the link that binds them together.

“How romantic.” He suspects she’s trying to sound unconcerned with the weight of their bond, but the way her voice hitches gives her away.

“Very.” She’s running her fingers over his skin, tracing the line of the scar she left on Starkiller Base. It’s a gentle touch, but it makes him shiver all over, craving more of it. Her palm cups his cheek, but it’s tentative, like she’s afraid of spooking him.

Like he’d run away from her touch.

“Rey—” He’s not sure what he wants to say to her. Acknowledging his emotions has never been at the top of his priority list; he’s feeling things now that he has no name for.

What he does know, is that he wants to kiss her more than anything right now.

He’s not consciously broadcasting that desire across the Force, but the rising color on her cheeks and the way she leans even closer to him suggest that she picks up on it anyway. Or maybe she was already thinking the same thing. He’s not sure how to tell. “Come with me,” she whispers. She’s so close that her lips practically brush against his as she speaks. “Not back to the Resistance. Come with _me_. We can fight Palpatine together.”

The two of them side-by-side. A part of him has always known it would come down to this. “You told me once that I wasn’t alone,” she adds when he doesn’t reply.

“And yet look how we’ve spent the last eight months.” The hurt he’s felt ever since she rejected his offer in the wreckage of Snoke’s throne room is still there, too deep to be healed by a few words and some pretty flowers.

The flowers are still blooming. Bushes and small trees are springing up out of the parched Pasaana sand. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, he knows, but it’s hard to think in allegories when Rey is all he can take in right now.

“You can’t kill the past,” she says gently. “But you can learn from it. And grow.” She reaches behind his head and plucks a flower. “Like these flowers.” She holds one up with deep purple petals and a bright yellow center. “See?”

He takes the blossom and tucks it behind her ear, thinking about how pretty she’d look with flowers braided into her hair. It’s unlikely they’d ever have the time to do something like that, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless. “There’s so much we still need to consider,” he murmurs. He’s been so focused on finding Rey ever since he came back from Exegol that he hasn’t bothered to think of any other plans. It doesn’t sit well with him that Palpatine has commanded him to kill the other half of his soul, and the fact that the undead Sith Lord wants her dead has made him narrow in on the need to find her. He may be the heir to the Skywalker legacy, but he’ll never defeat Palpatine without Rey by his side.

There’s a reason the Force has linked them together, after all. As much as the long-buried romantic in him wants to think it’s purely for the melodrama of their star-crossed lovers dynamic, the Force seeks balance. His counterpart in the light, Snoke once said. For all the lies he’s been told by the dark side, this, at least, is true.

Rey—his equal in the Force, his inescapable connection, his deepest love—smiles at him. She’s no longer running from the destiny that ties them together, a change that he never expected to see, no matter what the flowers have said. “But wouldn’t it be nice to figure it out together?”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Sonnet 28 by Pablo Neruda](https://spanishpoems.blogspot.com/2005/04/pablo-neruda-soneto-xxviii.html)
> 
> The flower Rey holds for Ben is ambrosia, which means “love returned.”
> 
> Starkiller Base flowers: lilacs (meaning: first sign of love)
> 
> Ahch-To flowers: allspice (compassion), magic fern (fascination; confidence and shelter), acacia (secret love)
> 
> Crait flowers: marigold (cruelty or jealousy), petunia (resentment, anger), yellow tulip (hopeless love)
> 
> Pasaana flowers: begonia (beware), maidenhair fern (secret bond of love), flax (domestic symbol; fate), gardenia (secret love), ambrosia (love returned), bay leaf (strength)
> 
> I am radioactivesaltghoul on [tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/) and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/radioactivesaltghoul) and r_saltghoul on [twitter](https://twitter.com/r_saltghoul).


End file.
